The cost of security has risen a notch with the spread of paid-for plastic security bags to one of Britain's busiest airports.

Passengers flying from Manchester now have to pay £1 to get a bag if they fail to bring their own in spite of pre-flight advice from the airport and most of the airlines using it.

The move was criticised by the Air Transport Users Council which accused the airport – and a handful of others which have also started charging – of "looking wherever they can to raise extra revenue".

The group's spokesman, James Fremantle, said: "It's a trend which is spreading. They started this off at Luton and, as we warned might happen, charges there have now spread to trolleys."

Manchester's charges were introduced last week following an attempt by the airport to highlight the issue by publicising weird attempts by passengers to get round rules on carrying liquids.

These included a woman who could not be persuaded that vintage wine was also a liquid, a man who froze his water bottle to claim it was a solid, and another passenger who drained his banned bottle of vodka on the spot. He was removed from the flight for being drunk.

A spokeswoman for the airport, which is owned and run by Greater Manchester's 10 local authorities, said that the charges had been introduced to help "educate" passengers to bring their own clear plastic bags when flying. The airport has faced occasional confusion and queues as people hunted for bags or argued about details, or the supply of free ones ran low, since security measures for liquids were introduced in November 2006.

The move follows a year of charging at Luton, which was the first British airport to end the free system. Passengers who fail to bring bags are charged £1 for a pack of four from dispensers, although each traveller is permitted to use only one. Leeds Bradford airport operates a similar system in the security area, to avoid delays sorting out passengers who have brought liquids but no suitable bags.

A spokesman at Luton said: "A lot of our passengers use the airport regularly and they got to know the system very quickly." But like Manchester, he said, security staff had experience of strange attempts to dodge the stringent rules. "They could write a book about them, I should think," he said.

The spokeswoman at Manchester said that there had been few complaints about the charging, which is also increasingly common at continental airports. The liquid measures were introduced after a terrorist alert in August 2006, over an alleged plot to blow up a number of aircraft using liquid explosive taken aboard in hand luggage as a supposedly innocuous perfume or drink.

Liquids were initially banned in hand luggage but since November 2006 each passenger has been allowed one clear, re-sealable plastic bag, no larger than 20cm by 18cm, as widely sold for sandwiches or freezer goods. A spokeswoman for BAA, Britain's biggest airport manager, said that bags would remain free at its seven sites, which include the country's two busiest, Heathrow and Gatwick. The others are Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Southampton.